Ronald Baatz

Minding My Friends' Daughter - Poem by Ronald Baatz

MINDING MY FRIENDS' DAUGHTER

On the other side of town, minding my friends' daughter while he is working at the paper until midnight and she is away in Philadelphia performing in a play I know very little about. Around nine, after watching a movie, their daughter Siri starts to doze in the room where the woodstove is located and two large cow skulls which adorn the wall in back of where the typewriter sits with a rollof paper in it. On this roll there are hundreds of haiku put there by anyone who wants to add to the collection. All night the animals have been restless and I've been letting them in and out. I have no idea what they want. I ask Siri and in her sleepy seven-year-old voice she suggests that I simply ignore them, and so I do but the situation remains the same. I ask her what the name of the large black cat is, and she tells me that the cat is called Crow. I in turn comment that this is an excellent name for this cat since it certainly looks more like a crow than a parakeet. At this she rolls around howling with laughtermaking the dog bark and pace faster and the cats meow their heads off, and even the wood crackling in the stove gives off little promising explosions.